English education stakeholders need ways of envisioning and advocating for transformative approaches to literacy teaching. In this inquiry, we consider the dynamic field of literary studies -- one of the scholarly fields most directly linked to English education. We conducted a content analysis of 404 articles recently published in literary studies journals. These articles make up approximately 10% of all the articles published in literary journals (in the English language) worldwide in 2018. In reporting key patterns of contemporary literary studies, we argue that this field is an underutilised resource for envisioning, advocating for, and defending expansive and critical forms of secondary English education.